For a woodwind reed musical instrument, the quality of the reed is an essential factor that decisively influences e.g. the timbre and the responsibility of the instrument, and also influences the quality of playing. Reeds for single-reed instruments, such as a clarinet family and a saxophone family, are commercially sold by various manufacturers, and most players use such commercially manufactured reeds. However, even if the reeds are manufactured in the same lot of the manufacturer, only a few of them have a quality usable in a concert with their original state, while most of them are dissatisfactory because, for example, they cause noise, have difficulty in controlling a sound freely from a small sound to a loud sound, provide only poor sound in spite of the breath blown into, provide an insufficient sound in a low-pitched sound region or in a high-pitched sound region, or have combined defects thereof.
Players manage to find out a better one among such reeds and use the reed, though not satisfactory. Some players make an adjustment to the reed based on their own experiences, however, such experiences are, like the playing skill of instruments, hardly made into documentation, and therefore a common concrete method available to everyone has not been known.
As an index for finding out a good sounding reed, it is slightly indicated to select e.g. a reed that has a grain (vascular bundle) running straight and has thickness varying smoothly from the center toward the vibrating tip.
Although most commercially manufactured reeds satisfy such criteria, various defects are found when placing the reed on the instrument and doing a test play. If a good sounding reed is found by chance, it is difficult to find out a significant visual difference between the good sounding reed and other dissatisfactory reeds. There is a method for drawing contour lines of the thickness distribution by measuring a number of points using e.g. a micrometer, however, this method cannot be readily performed.
Therefore, doing a test play by placing the reed on the instrument was only a method for determining the quality of the reed. Various methods have been proposed for adjusting a dissatisfactory reed to be satisfactory, however, most of the methods are unstable and lack objectivity since they depend on the individual feeling, and in most cases, more serious defects are generated in other points as a result of trying adjustment by those methods. Resultantly, most of the reeds have been discarded due to the failure.
As a method for solving the above problems, the applicant of the present application proposed “Testing device for inspecting rigidity distribution of a reed for a single-reed instrument” as disclosed in Patent document 1. This invention is characterized in comprising:                (1) a table for fastening a reed for a single-reed instrument in a state where a vibrating tip of the reed is suspended in the air;        (2) a probe for applying a force to the fastened reed in the vertical direction so as to detect the rigidity;        (3) a mechanism for moving a probe contacting point on the reed back-and-forth and right-to-left; and        (4) means for detecting the displacement of the probe contacting point.        
The invention disclosed in Patent document 1 is based on the applicant's knowledge that the good sounding reed has the rigidity distribution characteristics of the vibrating tip region that is substantially symmetrical with respect to the central axis of the reed and has a gradual distribution. The testing device indicates whether the test object reed satisfies this condition or not, and when the reed dissatisfies the condition, further indicates which portion of the reed dissatisfies the condition.
According to the invention disclosed in Patent document 1, it becomes possible to test the quality of the reed without placing the reed on the instrument and doing a test play, which was inevitable in prior art. Furthermore, regarding the defective reed, hidden cause of the defects can be found out, and adjustment points necessary for improvement can be identified, therefore even the reeds conventionally discarded as unused can be improved to be usable in the public playing. In particular, an aspect of the rigidity distribution of the reed can be automatically detected and shown objectively, thereby achieving an advantage that it is possible for any one to determine the quality of the reed.
Patent document 1: Japanese Patent No. 4022248